Oscar glory for The Artist – whoever thought the French could win something without our help?

The passage of time has made it hard to tell them apart, but Billy Crystal is on the left

The big news out of last night’s Oscars is that silent movie The Artist won Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture. As an Englishman, watching this unfold was a very strange experience. Whoever thought the French could win something without our help?

This was the first time I ever watched the Academy Awards. I’ve never understood a) why people win awards for doing their job (for which they get paid a ton of money) or b) why anyone not in that industry should wish to watch it. Ideally, the Oscars should be hosted in the cellar of a dingy pub – cocktails for five dollars each and the movie flashed up on a piece of old cloth hanging down from the ceiling. If it must be recorded, let it be podcasted on Perez Hilton’s website.

The best thing about the night is undoubtedly the red carpet, which brings out the inner bitch in all of us. I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but even I wondered why Jennifer Lopez had come as an extra from Xanadu. The most enjoyable live feed was from a local TV station, where two hopeless unknowns fired insulting questions at the stars. To Rooney Mara (who plays a psychotic bisexual social outcast in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) they asked, “Are you like that in real life?” Of Jonah Hill, they inquired, “As a comedy actor, do you struggle to be taken seriously?” The pundit of the night was the fabulously English Louise Roe. Standing at ten feet tall with a blinding smile, she towered over an aged Christopher Plummer and said, “I think you’ve got a few years left in you” … then winked at the camera. Her face screamed, “I’m just happy to be here!” Which made a change from Nick Nolte, whose face asked, “And where am I exactly?”

I’ve spent a lot of time living in Hollywood and I love it dearly. But one of its most frustrating qualities is how seriously it takes itself. The movies are an industry built on mutual affirmation. The pressure to believe that you are great, regardless of all the rejection you face on a daily basis, is shared a little by the big lie that everyone else is great, too – even the schmuck who you secretly hate and think is far too fat for the part they just landed. It’s a market of delusions, delusions so powerful that they cause nobodies from Alabama or the Bronx to move thousands of miles to a strange city, write a script, blag some cash off rich strangers, and pour it all into a movie that might not even make it to the screen. In this fevered environment, everyone is in the same imaginary cruise liner headed to the rocks. So everyone has an investment in believing all the lies: like Tom Cruise can act or Terence Malick’s films are any good. For the rest of us watching their tawdry awards show, the awful truth is flashed up on the TV screen in ugly HD. Here’s what we learned last night: Natalie Portman can’t act off an autocue, Billy Crystal is as funny as piles and someone, please, send Angelina Jolie a food parcel. The poor woman looks like she hasn’t eaten since Kung Fu Panda.

To rescue us all from the silliness was the French. It wasn’t just the language barrier that made them stick out – or the fact that their movie was artistically worthy. There was something in their man-kissing, shoulder shrugging way that suggested a little decadent European civilization had crashed upon Hollywood’s shore. And how refreshingly ugly the men were. What a change from the Americans, many of whom have had so much plastic surgery that their gender is no longer entirely obvious. On a completely unrelated note, Billy Crystal is starting to look eerily like a young Ethel Merman.

Of course, if Rick Santorum wins the presidency these effete French movies will be a banned import. Hollywood itself will probably be politely asked to leave the country – its product to be replaced by rolling episodes of Happy Days and a 1950s public information film about the evils of masturbation. If Newt Gingrich wins, America will win every category every year, and the ceremony will be broadcast live from Moonbase Alpha. Dear Newt. Would it surprise anyone if he was spotted outside the Oscars selling his DVDs out of a suitcase? I do hope his presidential campaign gets a sequel.